Pay Per Click also known as PPC is a very important part of the marketing mix for most businesses. There are many reasons why PPC marketing is worthwhile. First and foremost, with a PPC model, you will only be charged when someone clicks on your ad, unlike traditional media advertising or PPI/PPM (Pay Per Impression/Pay Per Mille) models.

When looking at this form of advertising, one of the most important things to do first, whether you run an AdWords account or someone runs the account for you, is to set a budget up that you are comfortable with.

One of the main benefits of PPC and why it’s important to your business is that you can reach your target consumer at the right time with the right ad. With the right targeting and keywords in your account, your ads are shown to potential customers that are actively searching for terms around the kind of products or services you sell. This is important because you will want to reach the right target audience, if you don’t reach the target audience then you will generate irrelevant traffic. On AdWords, you can also retarget people. For example, if someone has clicked onto your ad, through to your website, but has not bought a product or enquired, then you can retarget the people so that they will see your message more often, hopefully click on the ad again and buy the product or service which will lead to a conversion that you can track through AdWords and attribute this sale properly. This is called re-marketing.

PPC is also important to your business because unlike organic search, PPC can show results very quickly. This is beneficial to your business because if you or a PPC agency decided to test something on AdWords to see if it works, for example, a Shopping Campaign for a week or a month, you will be able to see if the campaign has been successful or not. This process tends to be much quicker than when evaluating the effects of SEO efforts. You can see if the Shopping Campaign has been successful by seeing how many clicks, impressions or conversions the campaign got, depending on your goals.

Typically, when you have an AdWords account you should have a target in your head, whether that is ROI (return on investment) or CPA (Cost Per Acquisition). You will be able to see if the campaigns that you are testing have been successful by comparing achieved ROI/CPA to target. This kind of data driven analysis, allows focussed, targeted marketing, that can be developed and optimised over time to get the best results for your business. The data available for PPC advertisers is a luxury that few other channels provide.

Put simply if implemented and managed properly, PPC offers a quick route to market, access to quality traffic for your site and excellent measurability, providing easy control of budgets and profitability the best possible platform to grow in a controlled and sustainable way.

Image taken from www.google.co.uk